Test Drive NeXT’s WebObjects in Revolutionary Dodge Virtual Showroom (1995)
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The biggest problem is that we aren't allowed (political bs) use the open source fork so can't use things like a shared session :(
There's an open source fork maintained by some people who rely on it, it's improved a lot since Apple's last release.
Can you explain more about shared sessions and the problem they solve?
How well did that work out in practice? Did WebObjects make heavy use of server-side in-memory sessions (which would require sticky sessions in a modern load-balanced setup)? Could it do things like registering event handlers to let you submit data back to the server or even go to another part of the app without having to know about URLs and HTML forms?
Initially it was Objective-C classes not Java.
Web Objects was later ported to Java and then it did generate Java classes.
My main problem was when Apple bought NeXT we really were left in the lurch and support was just impossible to get. Plus, canceling NeXTSTEP / OpenStep long before OS X was ready was not a fun thing. I often wonder if Apple had bought Be what NeXT would have become. I'm pretty sure Apple would have gone down in flames.
Apple, well, they were in an awkward extended transition from 68k to PowerPC and from MacOS classic to something new. I actually think they could have made a go of some of the internal OS projects they had, with sufficient discipline, instead of going and buying something new. I'm not convinced that buying NeXTstep put them ahead on anything. It took 5 years to ship OS X, I have to think that in that time I'm sure they could have finished Copeland and shipped it, too? I personally don't fully actually believe the line that buying NeXT saved them.
What saved them was Jobs & crew pared down the product line, laying off a crapload of staff, switching to Dell-style just-in-time delivery, and rolling out the coloured iMacs (which was a big success). Hard to say how much of that was Jobs/Ives or whether Apple without Jobs could have done the same?
Jobs killed some good stuff from the old Apple. Newton, Copeland, OpenDoc, for example.
Copeland in my mind had no chance of shipping. It just was just another step in the Pink -> Taligent saga. I loved the Newton but it was flawed in direction from the start (even loved NewtonScript and Soups). OpenDoc was not very fun to program, but others probably know better (I was more a visitor in those days, I'm not an Apple fan, I'm a NeXT fan who had to immigrate). I would have bought a Newton-based desktop or laptop from them though.
Be would have brought back Jean-Louis Gassée which probably would have been a bad thing.
And everybody there hates it, and has hated it for a long, long time, but it works Well Enough, and it would be exceedingly difficult to remove it.
> WebObjects is based on object technology allowing developers to gain all the benefits of objects; reusability, maintainability, and scalability.
This was actually not as obvious in 1995.
Who?
1) I learned from an article about Mr. Jobs at the time that I would never be able to wear and Italian cut business suit. The weird things Business Week once included in their articles.